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Caithness County Flag

Should Caithness have it's own flag? We have a separate culture from the rest of the highlands and seep rat from our brothers and sisters across the firth, so should we have a county flag? It could certainly help with marketing the county as a tourist destination. What would the flag look like? And what colours?Here is a rather crudely drawn "paint" job

Go for it! We have had an Orkney flag for decades, although a few years ago, that seemed to get changed form the one we were so used to, to one which is often mistaken for the Quisling flag from Nazi occupied Norway. That has offended quite a few tourists.

We'd be happy to include the green on yellow Nordic cross design on the page if you can supply some background regarding the colours and choice of design. The ABC has been successful in recent years establishing flags across England and Wales and would very much like to see some county flags registered in Scotland too. Unfortunately Scottish citizens do not enjoy the same freedom to display their local identity as those south of the border, as all flags in Scotland must be sanctioned by the chief heraldic authority, the Lord Lyon. Unfortunately this incurs a fee of £300. However, as has been mentioned on this forum, with its distinct history and culture Caithness is deserving of its own flag so perhaps a combination of citizen and local authority input might cover the cost of registration? The most likely means of establishing a flag for Caithness would be a competition as occurred in Orkney. There have also been a number of flag competitions in English counties, the most recent was in November 2013 when a flag was established for County Durham, through a competition. A competition can be conducted in cooperation with the flag Institute who can also advise on judges and formats and so on. You can contact the ABC about all this via the ABC Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/abcounties . Hope this is of some help and interest and look forward to hearing from you.

If this forum is a fair reflection of Caithness, then I suggest that the flag should depict a windmill, a dog turd, a Tesco logo and someone looking a bit confused, about to say - "Does anyone know...." One in each corner should look nice!

The choice of the design is because of the Nordic roots of caithness. Similar to that of Orkney.The colours, well, the green represents the land and the yellow/gold represents the low winter sun and the long summer days, a trait of the far north.They also happen to be the colours of the main caithness named sports club, caithness rugby club

If we can avoid letting politicians get in the way we'd do better, albeit that they seem to have all the money these days. We have three good designs on http://flags.abcounties.com/2014/02/05/caithness/ How do we get wider publicity to start a competition? Might the Caithness Courier be interested, or the 'local' BBC?

They are running with it now in the John O'Groat Journal, but if there is no input from those who are keen on the idea, it might still fail. We must all to write in to show support, and send any flag designs we have, and may the best flag win.

Just base it on the old county Coat of Arms with a few minor adaptations. Every one of the old counties' coats of arms are carved along the face of the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. And very impressive they look as part of the architecture.